´óÏó´«Ã½

Good Morning, <?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

A friend of mine has made, so he claims, a lot of money with Bitcoin. He is a Bitcoin millionaire. It’s a digital gold rush!

A glut of digital currencies has flooded the world. In fact, there are so many varieties of digital currency that it’s hard to keep up: Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple…they sound like they belong in a Phillip K. Dick short story and they probably should.

In this heady hunt for digital treasure, a few issues trouble me as a Muslim who’s worked in the Islamic finance sector.

Bitcoin emerged out of the Darknet, the secretive part of the internet that you really don’t want to know about yet its impact haunts the world. You won’t find the Darknet using Google.

With Bitcoin comes crypto-mining. That’s where people make money from number-crunching for Bitcoin and – according to a number of commentators - this takes up massive amounts of electrical energy and, by definition, produces huge quantities of heat. It has been alleged that some ruthless individuals are hijacking computers to do their number-crunching. An article in the Guardian in November 2017 claimed that Bitcoin consumes more energy in a year than Ireland. And the Independent suggested that the exploding price of cryptocurrency has triggered doubts about the environmental sustainability of the currency itself. Nothing in life is free and digital currency has had a very real effect on the real world.

Once again, the lure of lucre has led to innovation, but at a cost.

Lord, we are blessed with more than we need; we are grateful for all that you have given to us. Bless us with insight, the insight to know when we yearn for something that can harm us and to act accordingly and to the make the world a better place for all, Amen.